You are a new legal assistant and have worked for a medium-sized law office for three months.

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Question:

You are a new legal assistant and have worked for a medium-sized law office for three months. It has been a tremendous learning experience for you. It has taken time to learn how the office does business, its policies and procedures, what type of service you are expected to give to clients, and where resources are and how to use them (such as the office’s computer systems, law library, copy machines, and form files). Although it has taken time for you to learn these things, you also have been productive and have received several compliments on the quality of your work. One day, you read in the office’s staff manual that all legal assistants are required to bill 1,500 hours annually or face possible discipline. You immediately contact your supervisor and ask whether, as a new legal assistant, you will be expected to bill this amount. Your supervisor responds, “Of course. You were told that when you were hired.” You immediately begin gathering copies of your time sheets to compile your total. You also request that the billing department send you the total numbers of hours you have billed to date. When you get the report from billing, you panic; you have billed only 300 hours. You are 75 hours behind where you should be (1,500 divided by four [i.e., one-fourth of the way through the year] equals 375).
What do you do now, and how could you have avoided this unfortunate situation?